CrownOfShadows

Equinox is extremely powerful, her kit is just super clunky, at least if you're trying to use both sides. In fact I'd put her in my A+ or S rank category. None of her abilities are actually bad, which is amazing considering her age. The only one I don't use is rest/sleep, which is too niche and honestly I'd happily sacrifice it for something more useful. Rage needs a little cosmetic/vfx help but it's strong. I have an entire anti-nuke survival build built around pacify - that is such an incredibly underrated DR ability (at least with enough str, and it even helps the squad if they're close). There've been some stellar suggestions over the years to streamline how she works - one in particular I wish'd I'd bookmarked, and yes she definitely needs it - she's not really living up to her yin-yang potential that's for sure, but I feel obligated to defend her power even in her current state. It sucks that you kinda have to build for one side of her as it is but even just building for daylight makes her an absolute monster nuker - the best in the whole game in fact, even in SP, at least when it hits - but the build-up means others like Mesa outclass her via consistency over time. Few things are quite so satisfying as emptying the map in the blink of an eye though - and yet even so I think it's more balanced than all the other nukers. I love playing her. One of my top 5 frames. She does need QoL though. This is one of those frames that's really suffering from the augment slot / exilus augment denial as well. Also please we need more epic Equinox skins.

I feel like we just got done with another post on the same topic....

Yeah Chaos with augment is the only way I play Nyx anymore. It's a truly stellar defensive ability, other than that her kit really kinda sucks. My total chaos build is max range, augment + chyrinka pillars (pillars near defense objective, chaos handles the perimeter - extra line of defense in case chaos runs out and can't immediately recast), but gloom and pillage (and even terrify) are solid helminth compliments too. With a little love she could be back in top form though, she just needs heavy QoL on her 2 and 4, and her 1 needs massive expansion and synergy to be relevant. She's hard to build because she's extremely fragile, but she needs high range, a little strength and high duration at the same time - not to mention augments. Absorb was probably meant to help with this, but it's pretty meh as a survival mechanic, chaos is really the thing that keeps her alive.

So a while back.... maybe a year or two now, there was a TennoGen sale. I remember there was some controversy and confusion about whether this hurt the tennogen artists more than it helped them, and I'd like some post-mortem clarification on that if possible as I don't remember the final verdict. Also there were some difficulties with finding the items for sale in the UI, but some clever search phrases got around that for me. But mostly it was AWESOME. I spent more money on tennogen during that sale than the entire rest of my time on warframe combined, and there's still a ton of cool things I'd like to grab. Many of my favorite and most-used cosmetics are items I got during that. It's hard to justify spending money on things in the off-season and for frames/weapons I don't use on the regular, but when there's a sale... idk I'm a sucker then. So basically I'm wondering.... Is a Tennogen sale likely to happen again? Does it unfairly hurt the artists? (Or DE for that matter) Are there cross-save/cross-platform complications with this now?

On PC and usually solo (because everyone tends to drop out in the first few rounds) I'd just like to say that while I've never actually failed survival due to lack of enemies the number of times that is has been dangerously, nail-bitingly close have been unacceptably high, and I've even had this in squads too. The thing is this is completely out of the control of the user, and worse - the life support is not replenished as in regular survival - you have two and that's it. If you don't have a nuker, survival is a massive gate against you. Also while I'm here: I hate how long survival is in the Circuit. It's way too long. Like how many times do you need me to wipe the map for you before this is finally over? Especially when you compare it to exterminate, which is over so fast solo that you usually don't even have time to grab all the decree fragments. The length of it actually incentivizes hiding from the enemies because killing them feels pointless, but of course that's the only way to get support drops.

Brozime covers 2 of them well enough. They do melt SP if you capitalize on them. It's not instant, it's not a Mesa, nor should it be, but it does real damage over time. Pretending Haven is a trash ability is not correct. It's perfectly fine, and it's main purpose is ironically actually as a team shield support ability even though it's currently her main ability dps. As a general rule of game design, you don't want to create a way for players to be infinitely immortal or for 'strong' abilities to have zero downside to their use. That is exactly what you're asking for with casting pillage during aegis storm. It basically erases the cost of using the ability. Think about it in terms of energy. It's not like DE just randomly left it out. They left it out for a reason, and maybe, just maybe, that was a solid choice. And it's not like Hildryn is alone in this, many, many frames cannot cast other abilities while in their 'ultimate'. It's not 'unfair' - it's a tradeoff. What, do you also want to change this for every 'ultimate' ability in WF? Also I'd like to point out that making pillage castable during aegis storm would not be the fix aegis storm needs. It would not make it feel good - it would still suck to use. It's a poorly conceived and awfully implemented ability. Pillage wouldn't even be a bandaid for it, the usage rate of aegis wouldn't even flicker if you stacked pillage on it. Leave Pillage as it is. Completely overhaul Aegis Storm. Tweak Balefire. That's what Hildryn needs.

Looks like the whisper forums cycled out, so I'm here to beat the drum about Netracells again. Ran all 5 just now. Got no archon shards. Got no rare arcanes. Got 1 adapter. My 3rd run had necramites 500+ m away. My 4th run had necramites 300+ m away. And my 5th and final run had both necramites over 800m away. Guess how I'm feeling right now? Not great. These missions are badly designed and their reward structure absolutely sucks. K byeeeeeeeeeeee

Lol, too bad I was really looking forward to watching you frantically try to explain how Hildryn is not an exceptional top-tier tank.

I agree with this in principle but not in all of its details. I've never like how hard it is to experiment with them that's for sure. I'd suggest that instead of unlocking hot-swap with any crafted component after guilding I believe you should be able to hot-swap with any component before guilding (whether using your suggested base system or not). The reason for this is because the guilding process should consume the parts - they shouldn't be consumed by the initial choices when you've had no chance to even test them (and they shouldn't NOT be consumed at some point either). If you unlocked hot-swap after guilding, the parts would not be consumed (only the base would be, if I followed your ideas correctly). While that's nice for users, it's not ideal because the modular part of the kit become infinite - they become like mods, you only need one or maybe two at most - unless you implement a sort of system that keeps track of what copy of a thing is in which weapon and it must be pulled out of that weapon to be freed up to be used in another, which would be a legitimate alternative method, a sort of socket system. If that's what you had in mind I'd be on board for that. But anyways I'm suggesting that we could also let players experiment as they please with any parts they've built, and then boost the stats and consume the parts when guilding. This forces the player to build more parts to replace the used ones, but also incentivizes commitment to a build by providing the boost in stats. Also, since they wouldn't reach their full potential until guilding, some of the min-maxing that would naturally occur during the free experimentation phase is obviated. Yet one other (somewhat lazy but still helpful) possible way of fixing the modular systems to be more experiment-friendly is to make them dirt cheap both to buy and build. They take some dedicated farm as it currently stands and sometimes some dedicated rep farm - and instead of requiring specialty materials switch it to generic materials as well. If it was a mere pittance to get them and build them that would remove a lot of the barriers, although leveling and guilding are also big gating factors too. It's a very long and arduous process as it currently stands.

Honestly, I'd be on board for this or something like it, it's super frustrating and I'd be more likely to play endless modes if I was reasonably confident everyone was staying for awhile. So true and I am SO tired of seeing this bs on the forums

This is false, she has several nuke builds based off her 3 Also despite Protea and others having overshield spam Hildryn remains the best shield tank in the game, if not the best tank hands down of the entire roster.

No, casting pillage during Aegis Storm is a terrible idea. People would just sit in Aegis Storm and never leave. You'd create a new AFK mode, and we have enough of those already.

The surging augment for Excal is your friend there. If you want combo with Baruuk use slide attacks not the waves.

It's a known issue, DE is aware of it

I always liked Baruuk and played him for years but only in the last few months have I finally GOT him. A few months ago I actually would've said he sucks. The key to playing him is actually slide attacks. They build combo very fast and also do better damage, and also avoid some of the irritation that Desert Wind's waves create. Also this might sound crazy but I stopped using Reactive Storm. While it does adapt, if you pay attention it very rarely actually uses the element you would really want. I think it's better to mod Desert Storm for the faction, choose exactly the best elements and save a mod slot on Baruuk himself. All that status is a really pretty number, but think about how much work it's really doing for you - like what does 1000% status do for you? It just applies all the possible statuses on your weapon. I came to this realization actually via Chromatic Blade on Excal, after I dropped that from my builds as well. If you want the status vs heavy armor, well there's also tennokai and Wrathful Advance now, not to mention a helminth armor strip (which is how I run my Baruuks). As for exalted weapons in general, honesty I'm on the fence. People complain about them being weak but... well some are, most aren't. Baruuk, Khora, Excal and Mesa outclass any regular weapon imo (although I'm an L4 player with MASSIVE investment in them all), except maybe the glaive but I hate using the glaive. Atlas surely technically outclasses any weapon but honestly he's the warframe with an exalted that I've played the least, I barely managed to copy a meme build and then peaced out, he needs a rework. Gara is interesting, I'd say she's about on par with most high level weapons, but it's a bit asymmetrical with her. I'd say Wukong is above average with his exalted, it really does damage, better than any of my usual go-to melee weapons. Titania's secondaries are very strong but I find them slightly below average overall, although I have a little investment left to do on her. Warframes that are most definitely worse than any upper level weapon would be Hildryn (oh it has big numbers, but omg it sucks), Valkyr (nice numbers but also really sucks to use, even with WA) and maybe Ivara (I've seen videos where they use Concentrated Arrow to great effect, but I've never personally been able to get anywhere with her bow although it's been awhile - this is likely a case of me just not trying hard enough or learning enough). I'm not sure about Garuda's Talons, haven't used them enough (although they've always felt pretty much like regular claws). Titania's exalted melee is just awful to use and the damage without WA or something is pathetic. It's funny I always want to think Nezha's chakram and Styanax's spear are exalted or psuedo-exalted for some reason but I guess DE finally had enough of that by then. ------------- Overall, I do dislike how limited the mod selection for exalted weapons feels, but I think mostly they're in a fine spot except for one or two outliers. I wouldn't mind some specially tuned exalted-only mods, or even special mods for particular exalteds that fit on the weapon instead of the warframe. Also I think warframes with exalted weapons are often put into awkward situations where they are shorter on mod space than others (mostly due to augments), which is unfortunate. I'm not sure about the melee arcanes - do I wish they had them? Yes. But do they actually need them? I'm not certain, so many of them are still out-classing their counterparts that it's hard to say give them more power. As for pseudo-exalted, that need for a stat stick can be frustrating, but honestly I think it has some charm for that niche - and also like 75% of my interest in rivens would evaporate if stat sticks disappeared. Personally I think they're fine, we just need better documentation, but I'd be ok with making all pseudos into proper exalteds too. I think exalted and even pseudo-exalted are overall good - they make those frames extra interesting and extra deep. I think one major factor as to why people dislike exalted and pseudo-exalted is that there are so many badly explained technicalities that it takes forever to learn how to actually build (and play) for each individual warframe, so I think a lot of people just jump in and immediately reach the conclusion that they suck, or like me struggle for a long time before it finally clicks together. There are mysteries about how many of them work even to this day. Also, a lot require really high investment to reap the full benefits, so same problem there. My Mesa story is actually similar to my Baruuk's - I remember it took a long time and many experiments before it finally all snapped together and I felt incredibly strong with her, but for a while I thought her peacemakers kinda sucked above a certain level.

I agree I think Oberon is underrated, he's more useful than people give him credit for. That's interesting about the bleedout timer. In addition to what you mentioned a 200% strength Oberon actually out-heals a 300% Wisp (at least on paper) which is pretty nuts. I'd be curious about people who play Oberon more regularly than me, but when I play him it's with his 3 running constantly (unless I'm on a max garden build or something else funky). With his 4 augment and his 3 running he gives allies something like 700-900 armor (depending on str) which is nothing to sneer at - that's basically an Arcane Guardian - and all while armor stripping the enemies at the same time. I put a couple radiation shards on him and they do seem to boost him a bit particularly with his 4 augment. If they offered other radiation-based things like an Archon style mod it could help push him back into the limelight a bit. Upgrading the visual fx for his garden would also help - spawning a bunch of alien plants/flowers, especially if they were animated a little and taller - if they looked awesome it would be enough rule-of-cool for people to play him more I think. (would be sick if they wilted when the timer ran out) I think one main issue is that his buffs are mostly invisible compared to Wisp. Nobody really is aware that they're benefiting from him. Also his armor strip apparently suffers from inconsistencies which hurt his utility there a bit. But he's not far off from being extremely potent.

This comparison is spot on, well said. The juxtaposition really puts it into perspective. I actually think he's a bad design from top to bottom. I hate his entire kit and it feels about as good to play as Chroma's to me (not fun, extra clunky). Regardless of that though, I think everyone is very well aware that Mesmer Skin and Intrepid Stand are both just a little bit ridiculous at this point - there's a line somewhere that these two abilities have crossed. It's hard to point to, but we all know it's there. I honestly hate that there's only one way to play Styanax now - unending 4 spam - I think this augment, as good as it is, kinda ruined him. He turned from a versatile workhorse into a one note oppressive spammer.

Hmm I didn't know this, very interesting and quite a smart setup

Honestly I like this idea a lot. Enemies could sneak in under their umbrella, but if you pop their nullifier bubble they all freeze in stasis.

Your change honestly isn't bad, but keep in mind that having a 90% DR ability with zero downtime is not ideal game design. Usually you want to have a drop in DR to create a window of vulnerability for gameplay dynamics. This is why most all DR abilities, including Nekros' 4th, are time-gated or energy-gated in some way. While you do suggest an energy cost on the resurrections it is unfortunately somewhat lost in the wind because he is typically showered constantly in both health in energy (and not the kind that is limited by channeled abilities, i.e. Desecrate + Equilibrium). Even hyper aggressive and outrageous costs like 50% of his energy pool per resurrection would be resolved very quickly (at least in target rich environments), so 10 per shadow feels like it might as well be free. Regardless of the costs though, my main issue with this is that even though shadows would not be healed on-recast he constantly would have a full compliment of shadows and thus full DR at all times (assuming a standard Shield of Shadows build). Now, there is one counterexample to my argument here that I can think of: Equinox's Pacify is an incredible channeled DR ability that is extraordinarily cheap to run (basically free). You could use this to argue that making Shield of Shadows DR channeled is fair play, and honestly it's a totally solid argument because Equinox absolutely already has this (despite complexities in Equinox's kit that make it clunky to use), but I still stand by the idea that having permanent DR on a frame is probably not the best direction, as is evidenced by all the other DR abilities, and forcing the player to interact to sustain it is overall healthy. This compounds with Nekros too, because he has so little to do normally - many Nekros players don't cast Terrify except in emergencies because they don't need enemies running away, and Desecrate is already hands-free as it is, so if his 4th was channeled too basically you would never cast any of his abilities (except maybe your helminth, depending). I don't really mind the upkeep, but sometimes I will find myself without my army and thus dead, mostly if I'm not running Adaptation and a bit of beef underneath, or if I run out of range. I will agree that Nekros isn't quite living up to his necromantic dreams though - it's close but could definitely be better realized. Soul Punch is probably the legit worst ability in the entire game, it's down there below F tier (with Inaros' Devour). Any change to it at all would be a blessing. Being able to use it to heal all his shadows would be great - still not nearly enough to make me not helminth over it, but at least it would be good for something.

Agreed. Very annoying. They could also use a little bit more love in their mod department in general. Similar to Kubrows & Predasites, they are mostly just weaker/less useful versions of Vulpas and Kavats. I think there's great potential for making them anti-corpus specialists in particular. Maybe give them a mod to annihilate nullifier bubbles for example, or strip all shields from an enemy. You could in turn make Kubrows anti-grineer specialists and Predasites could be anti-infested/anti-corrupted specialists.

I don't think people realize that DE already has dedicated servers. The reason you don't have host migrations on open world hubs & relays is because those are dedicated servers. (LOL imagine the host migration nightmare that would be). The problem is the sheer size of the playerbase makes implementing this for every launched mission a titanic, intimidating endeavor. Hosting hundreds of thousands of players, or theoretically millions of them all at once is a huge overhead. I honestly couldn't even guess how many concurrent missions are running on average, that would be an interesting statistic that would greatly inform this discussion. While I also share concerns over mobile - and honestly Switch too, although that seems to be working out? - being hosts (although internet connectivity is pretty insane these days), I think that fixing that one issue (host migrations) is not worth the network overhaul and expense that dedicated servers would bring. And I'd be willing to bet that tons of things have special hosting code too (RJ in particular omg) which would have to be completely redesigned and rebuilt and re-deployed. I think the only real true reason for switching to dedicated servers would be if they made a pvp game mode that caught on really well, or were hoping to make one, but even then they would most likely leave the rest of the game as p2p and have the pvp be dedicated. One way they could do this though, and the way I would do it if I was them and really wanted it, would be to start really small and and just slowly ramp up it up over time until eventually the whole game was converted. Like you can't just drop dedicated servers in on a game this size, but you could develop a plan and slowly convert it over like 5 or 6 years. They would probably want to offload the cost of that to players though, which means more aggressive marketing tactics... eh, eeeee yeah ima have to agree with some of the others here we might be better off skipping that improvement.

Lol this minor UI description failure is not the reason we see zero Oberons. Art choices were fine for the era they were made in, don't forget how old the goat is. They could definitely use a fresh pass though that's for sure.

I was grinding them hard at first for those juicy shards. What we need is other sources of shards not other sources of Kahl stock :) Which we kinda have with netracells now, although those have their own suite of issues... I haven't played a Kahl mission in like maybe 4-5 months now... and probably won't until DE finally buckles down to improve it. Kahl as a game mode by itself isn't terrible. I actually enjoyed it the first few weeks. The real problem is there is zero variety compared to warframe play: it's always the same exact mission (no tile structure), using the exact same character, using (pretty much) the exact same weapons, against the exact same enemies. There's no mod loadout to fiddle with and be interesting on either Kahl or his weapons, there's no companion either, there's not even other players to spice things up with just existing, much less being unique in their loadouts as well... Kahl is a story of wasted potential, more than most of DE's other islands. Seeing WF through new eyes via the New War was spectacular, they should've gone the distance with it. If they ever want to make Kahl missions mean something to the community as a fun alternative style of play, they need to implement at least 4 things imo: Arsenal. It can be limited, but it needs to exist. An arsenal should've 100% been the priority over the cosmetics. Gameplay first, cosmetics second. Co-op. Playing with other makes things more interesting, more dynamic, more engaging. Missions that are more free-form, less hand-holding helicopter-mom go here and do exactly this exactly this particular way... less RPG style missions and more arena/battle style, like a simple exterminate with a squad of Grineer grunts would be most welcome. Rewards. Add more evergreen rewards to his shop besides archon shards, and/or mission rewards: going there for exactly only one thing makes it feel like a chore. I will say that if they are adamantly against creating co-op for these missions (which seems to be the case), they could do a lot better job with Kahl's allies. Like being able to form a squad beforehand would be a great alternative: I mean like if you could say 'I want this corpus guy and this grineer guy and this grineer guy, and this other corpus guy': my 4 allies, and I want these weapons on them. Like they should take the RJ crew customization to the next level, where you can kit out your whole custom squad, and then maybe expand Kahl's command ability a bit more. That would definitely help, and they wouldn't even need to do a full arsenal for that. Honestly if you could bring your converted Lichs & Sisters that would be great and infuse more meaning into that whole subsystem. And of course the untapped pvp potential of grineer and corpus that we were all basically expecting after the New War dropped, but I shan't get into that.

As a half measure, another solution would be to share traces with all Tenno in affinity range. A similar option would be to use corrupted kills as a meter, and share those kills like affinity - it takes out the step of RNG material drops (kills are reliable, rng is not). This would help the void trace collection problems, but fissures need more than just this. Building even further on this, we could simply use direct affinity gain to gradually crack the relic, as that comes from even more sources and is less susceptible to runaway speednukers. The problems with void traces and fissures are manifold. How about a list of them: Exterminate & Rescue: speedrunners leaving stragglers behind only to reach the end and one or more people not have enough traces, forcing heavy backtracking for everyone or the occasional bad mannered force extract minus someobody's reward. And sometimes, no amount of backtracking will solve the problem. Exterminate & Survival: slower team members getting left behind and causing fissure aggro to drift. While similar to the above point, this is actually a separate issue with where fissures decide to spawn. Usually but not always this seems to happen around the area that has the most players within affinity range of each other. But we all know sometimes they spawn around the one guy 5 miles ahead or the one guy 5 miles behind. Survival is further complicated by being non-linear: that is players are spread out in all directions and instead of backtracking along the exit path to find traces players must backtrack along every player's path to find the missing traces. Interception: is a unique problem. In non-SP fissures an interception tower typically needs to be left un-controlled because controlling all 4 towers almost always results in the entire team being shorted one or two void traces when 100% is hit, which is awful design. Interceptions are time gated missions and you are here forcing even more time to be spent beyond what is mandatory - and why? - because other systems (rng/spawn/corruption) are failing. It's like a Russian nesting doll of bad designs. SP fissures on the other hand are problematic because they are more difficult than most missions (because the aggro system will bury one tower in enemies which can overwhelm an unprepared player, anyone who's tried to go pub r4 on a Berehynia fissure knows what's up), and also awkwardly require you to abandon your defense objectives (to go get void traces). Excavation: suffers from being overly reliant on excavator progress, which is subject to long-standing issues of survivability, energy cell availability, aggro vanishing, and a lot of hiking. Speed Killing before Corruption: only very rarely do players seem to realize that when a group of enemies spawns and runs at them they can actually be left alone so that a fissure can corrupt them later. Instead, everyone kills everything as fast as possible - and this often makes many of the above issues worse. Difficulty marking Traces: ever finally get those missing traces and then try to mark them for the rest of the team? Then you know this pain. Defense/Excavation/Survival/Interception compared to Rescue/Capture: the dramatic disparity in times for the exact same result is bad. If you're going to force players to play at predetermined rate X and then offer other players rate Y that they can mostly set themselves, then you should scrap or speed up rate X or slow down rate Y to be competitive, or make mission X rewards scale based on mission Y rewards. They should be style choices not efficiency choices. Basically in the current system you are charging people plat for making the foolish choice to run defense/excavation/survival/interception Disruption: in non-SP disruptions, it is easily possible to complete all 4 conduits before everyone has traces, something which typically results in the immediate abandonment of the mission by most or all of the players. Despite this, players never seem to cease keeping this behavior alive. This can also happen by mistake, if two people activate the final two conduits nearly simultaneously, unaware of each other. Once again, here is a mode that asks everyone to stop doing the mission and wait for fissures to corrupt some enemies which hopefully drop the needed traces upon being killed. Basically, stop and wait for RNG. Disruption also occasionally suffers from aggro drifting, but not as severely as others. Spy: more than any other mode, this creates aggro drift. More than any other mode this demands that the mission not be played until sufficient rng jail time is served. More than any other mode, very few people actually come equipped for it. Using affinity instead would boost this mode considerably (opening vaults gives you affinity) Mobile Defense/ Assault: suffer from middle child syndrome. It has a mandatory jail sentence less than other modes like survival and excavation, but more than capture/rescue. Again, this should scale in time to match the standard (whatever that is meant to be) OR its rewards should. Endless modes cannot benefit from gained traces, forcing a restart in order to 'recharge' the irritating design decision. I assume this is an intentional failsafe to prevent people sitting in fissures and benefiting from them for as long as they want, in which case my response would be the same as elsewhere: #1 they can just restart, and because your scaling rewards kinda suck, nothing is lost. #2 if you don't want players playing your endless missions endlessly, then don't make them endless. Look mom I solved it. Recharge. Void Traces, as we all know, are very hard to recharge without boosters. How hard? Miserable hard. Let's say you're a new player on a tight wallet. Let's say you want to crack 1 radiant relic. You need 100 traces. How many fissures do you need to run to get 100 traces? Something like 10 missions. That is pain with a capital P, because the likelihood of you getting the desired item even after all that effort is SO small. In fact, if you crack it solo, you are almost guaranteed to not get what you want. How many radiant relics do you need to get an item solo? From personal experience I can say it's often close to 10. That's 100 mission's worth of void traces - yes you must run 100 missions to get a reasonable chance of getting one part for an item. How many HOURS is that??!?! When you compare that to something like netracells, it really puts relic cracking into perspective. It's hell. Is that respecting a player's time? No. Netracells are heaven by comparison. Yes, rad groups help, and resource boosters help, cutting this way down, but the base system design by itself is raw sadism. So let's think now: should we go through items 1-10 and try to individually solve them by fixing spawn rate and aggro logic and map design and mission design and mission mechanics and fissure spawns and even frame and weapon design to stop nukers? Lotsa problems huh? OR... should we just change how trace collection works? YOU DECIDE>